The Nothing (19 page)

James didn’t say a word on the way back to the police station.
Bentley figured that James might want to go on home. He had assumed right. As soon as they pulled into the parking lot, James jumped out and walked towards his car in the visitor parking lot. The two suspects were arrested a few days later after someone ratted on them. But after that night, it wouldn’t be until a hot afternoon in August that they would speak and see each other again.

***

Finally, Bentley was able to get his squad car into the front parking lot of the Guinevere apartments. He would have to walk across the street through the cars, which were moving slowly or sitting still, to get to the front doors of the Transcom building. As he crossed the street, he heard screams and what sounded like cars hitting each other. Bentley looked toward the crashing sounds and saw at the end of the street that there was a crowd gathering. Several cars were trying to maneuver around the crowd, bumping and grinding against other cars in their way.

Ok, do I get into another situation like the one an hour ago
? I am still on duty. I’ll check it out and then get to the Transcom building.
Bentley started on a light jog. When he got there, several fights were raging. Three cars had been involved in a light accident. People in other cars were yelling for others to move and get out of the way. Others were yelling back that they couldn’t move without hitting anyone. Bentley heard someone say, “Who gives a shit? There isn’t anyone coming. I got to get out of here.” In one of the fights, there were two men brutally attacking each other while four women were trying to break them up. The two men rolled over and around each other on the ground then managed to rise and continue throwing punches. Bentley saw one punch hit one of the women that were trying to break them up and watched her fall to the ground unconscious. In another fight, it was two women who were holding on tightly to each other’s hair. He saw blood flowing from the top of both women’s heads and several clumps of hair lying on the ground. Two men and a woman were trying to get them to stop by grabbing at their arms. One of those men then punched one of the women, knocking her to the ground where she started to convulse. The other man sucker punched that man in the back of his head sending him to the ground. He straddled on top of him and began to throw punch after punch into the man’s face. Bentley saw several cell phones on the ground.

“Officer why won’t 911 work?
Do something, that woman is dying and they are all going to kill each other!” Right then, Bentley felt a whack against the side of his right thigh and found himself on the hood of a BMW. A gray haired man stuck his head out of the window and yelled, “Get out of the way asshole. I am in a hurry!” The BMW then jerked forward and Bentley was able to roll off of the hood and land on his feet. After a few seconds, he realized that he was just bruised but would be sore the next morning. He immediately went to the door to pull it open. But the gray haired driver tried to hold the door shut. With a forceful grip, Bentley swung open the door pulling the old man out onto the street. “Officer I am sorry but I have to get to the ER. I think I’m having a heart attack and if I don’t make it soon, I will pass out.”

Bentley
saw that the man had vomit on the front of his shirt and that his face was flushed. “Ok, Ok! Get back in your car and try to relax until we can get help. Don’t worry about hitting me or anything, just don’t try to drive and I will try to find help.” Bentley helped the man get back in his car. “Turn on the AC and roll the window up. Leave the doors unlocked. If you see an opening and you can get the car to the side of the street and park, take it. I will try to get someone here.”

“Officer what is happening?
Everyone is fighting, driving crazy and it seems that all the cops and firemen are gone.”

“I think
our communications are down. So fire and police aren’t being dispatched because no one can call in. I just hope it all comes back up.”

“Well thank you officer.
By the way, there is a huge pile up on 45 and 288. People are going nuts because their phones aren’t working. Never thought the apocalypse would be caused by this!”

“
Yeah no shit.”

Son of a bitch!
These people were involved in a minor accident, got frustrated because they couldn’t call anyone, and then became so angry at each other that things turned violent. Is this happening all over the country?

Bentley
noticed smoke rising a few miles away on the southside of town where Hobby Airport is located.
Firefighters aren’t going to know that there is a fire unless they are watching from a high roof somewhere. They haven’t done that since the fifties! How is dispatch going to be able to dispatch them? The radios and cell towers are all down. How will anyone be able to dial 911? You should be able to, even if you don’t have a SIM card in your phone. And if that isn’t even working, then we are going to see some real shit go down. Once the gangs and gun happy rednecks learn that nothing is working, it is going to be a war zone.

Bentley
held onto a glimmer of hope that a fire station or police station somewhere in the city would still have a landline. But even then, would those lines be working? Would dispatch, or the state, be able to receive those calls?

The melee in the street would just have to play itself out. What could one cop with no backup or communication do? He didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.
Bentley eventually made his way to the massive Transcom entrance and walked inside. Four armed security guards stood on either side of a large metal detector and x-ray conveyor for checking bags. It reminded him of the entrance to an airport terminal. But he knew how essential the Transcom’s mission was and understood the security measures. Especially with all is going on outside.

“Go ahead officer, go on through.”

“Thank you sir. Say, I am looking for James Featherworth. Would you happen to know where he is located?”

“Give me o
ne second sir.” The security officer flipped through a three ring binder with laminated sheets. A phone was sitting on the table right next to him and several computers were sitting on a half circle desk in the center of the area.
I guess with everything down, it is back to the old pencil and paper. This looks like a landline phone, except there are no cords; only an antenna. Hasn’t anyone considered the theories on these wireless waves doing brain damage or causing health problems? Seems that everyone went wireless crazy overnight. It’s as if old-fashioned technology and values became too tedious. Who knows? I do know that what’s going on outside and around the city wouldn’t have happened fifteen years ago.

“Mr. Featherworth should be on the th
ird floor in station 3f.”

“Thank you officer, I can go on up?”

“Yes sir. We are in a code 3 so everyone should be on duty.”

“How are the communications here holding up?”

The guard shook his head and sarcastically replied, “How do you think officer? We have nothing here. Everyone is ordered to their stations, but with no signals, we are all just wasting time here. I could be at home protecting my family. Stupid bullshit.”

It has been close to a year since he spoke with James.
Things went badly between them and Bentley felt mostly to blame. But there is also much self-evaluation James needs to do. The arrogance, ignorance and attention seeking behavior were imposing. Yet these behaviors were also harmless for the most part. But most people could only handle so much of James before having to get away from him.
I wish he could find a nice woman like I did. I hope Mary is at home and prepared like I had practiced with her before. She is smart and knows to wait there and be prepared. It is all planned out. But now I have a whole other set of problems. For one, I know when this is all over; I will be going to prison. I shot two innocent black men. There is no way to justify that. Sure I was being attacked with gunfire and trying to get to safety. But I can’t help to think I was trained better than that. The public should be able to expect better than that from a police officer. I panicked and now two men are dead. I will take any punishment that my fellow man feels is necessary. It is God’s will. For now, I have to find James, get to a police station and get my family all together so we can be safe.

The elevator doors opened on the third floor to an empty hallway that t-boned another hallway.
The unexpected silence was creepy. Bentley walked and took the hallway to the left since the stations, or offices, went in alphabetical order. Stations were around fifteen feet from each other.

“
Excuse me officer, may I help you?”

The voice from behind Bentley surprised him, which led him to almost pull out his gun.

“Oh hello. Well I am here to see James Featherworth in 3f.”

“Oh ok.
My name is Harold. He should be in his station at the end of this hallway. Say, do you happen to have any information on what is going on out there?”

“
All I know is that cell phones and radio communications are down.”

“Yeah w
e know. So is internet, satellite and cable television.”

“You can’t get a sat
ellite phone to work?”

“Nope.
All we have is the emergency landline in the server room. We have been in touch with the state and federal emergency agencies. This is happening all throughout the country. Maybe even the world. But calling outside our borders is impossible.”

“How’s the
police and fire response? Are they operating in any capacity?”

Harold shook hi
s head disappointingly.

“I figure you would know officer.
We have seen a few police officers drive by when they could get through the traffic. No sirens though. I think that dispatch can’t get through to them. No one can get through to anyone. It is hit or miss for crime solving out there. There are a few fire stations with landlines. But they are having trouble getting to the few fires that are burning around the city because what good is a landline if the phone you are calling is wireless. Now it’s down to if they see smoke off in the distance. We did get a call on the landline from Hobby Airport reporting two plane wrecks. We have had the phone staffed for the last hour and a half”

Bentley wanted to punch the wall.
He, just like most everyone else, was addicted to the peace that a wireless society brought with it. The fragility of the technology had been taken for granted by everyone. It was a hard acceptance for anyone that the world could fall apart due to wireless signals just vanishing.

“Damn
, can it get any worse?”

“If you are into dystopian
studies like I am, then you would know that we haven’t seen anything yet. It is our inherent destiny to collapse. Look at the Romans, the former Soviet Union. It was just a matter of time before America was next. People are going crazy out there and society will fall apart. It is our nature. We are spoiled beasts. And the spoiled can’t handle change. They can’t handle trauma. Maybe we need another world war to set everyone straight. But that is just me; me rambling at the most inappropriate time. Sorry officer.”

“Oh its ok.
Two plane wrecks? How?”

“We h
ave a guy working here who is an aviation liaison for the city. He told me that with no communication with flight control, these planes won’t know if the plane that landed before them has cleared the runway. Or planes taking off won't know if another plane is trying to land in the same spot. The radar scanners in modern planes go off satellite GPS. No Satellite, means not knowing where the other planes around you are located. This guy assumes that several planes have crashed into each other. You can see the smoke slightly from the roof, even though it is fifteen miles away. If they have sonar, then they would be able to use it because it goes off sound pings. But sonar only keeps them from crashing into each other while still in the air below 500 feet. By then it’s too late. Soon we will see planes running out of fuel and falling from the sky. And this is only what we got from Hobby. No idea if there have been problems at other airports like Bush Intercontinental. We don’t have a number to a landline there. They, like most, probably don’t have one.”

“Thanks Harold, I need to go talk to my brother.”

“You are welcome officer. He wanted to leave earlier, said he was sick, but we were in a code so we had to stay put. Quite a few people left here when word of the plane crashes spread. And with nothing they can do here, they went home. Of course they are fired and could possibly face criminal charges. They were just really scared. I would go ahead and get James out of here. He is probably panicked beyond help anyways.” Bentley nodded then turned to go to James’ station.

As he walked in
unannounced, James’ burst of expletives sounded like they were coming from someone who had just been caught masturbating. “Goddammit, I have told every motherfucker to knock!” James didn’t see Bentley right away. But Bentley could see that James was on the floor in the corner using his lunch kit as a pillow.

“It
’s me man, Bentley. Are you sleeping?”

“Yeah, fuck!
What else am I going to do? It is the fucking apocalypse bitch! A wireless armageddon! Since we are in a stupid code, I am stuck like cum in a crack!” Bentley could feel James’ agitation and knelt slowly a few feet from him. “I spoke to a coworker of yours, Harold. He told me what is going on. Said you should leave with me.” James shook his head and rolled onto his side facing away from Bentley like a defiant child. “No, he is trying to get me in trouble. He is jealous you know. Since I am better than he is at this shit.”